Hello everyone, I just showed a friend a prototype of a site offering a service I''m trying to sell (sorry, not on the Internet yet - he saw it at my house). His comment: "Looks like it does everything, but also looks pretty ugly. You''re not going to wow anybody with that". Sitting back and thinking about it, he''s dead right - it needs some bling to make it sell itself, rather than have me trying to convince people to use it. Functionality-wise, it hits every button there is, but it looks like crap. Not having a visual design bone in my body, I''m stumped to know how to proceed. Sure, I''ve looked at the Ajax APIs for Rails and I can see that using them could add the bling, but I just don''t have the bling gene. Side note - I''m sitting here typing this in bare feet, old shorts with>1 hole and >1 torn pocket and a T-shirt with torn collar & no logo ina dull grey/green/olive sort of color. My watch is a Casio; my toothbrush is cheap and electric; my car is dented; my OS is Gentoo; my office is piled high with stuff that looks totally random except to me; advertisers stop me in the street to ask me to pose as the "Before using..." person for products they''re trying to sell. I am, however, brave, honest and true. My core, my life experience, my very being, is robustly anti-bling. Where does a guy like me turn to learn how to *use* these cool Ajax-y things, without making something that looks ridiculous? I understand the technology side of things; it''s the "make it look stylishly enticing" part of things I''m struggling with. I have a graphic designer friend I could call on, but she''s not across Web 2.0 stuff at all and I don''t think we actually speak a common language when it comes to design vs. functionality. Thanks in advance for any suggestions Regards Dave M.
Clearly you''re a hacker and not a designer. Hire someone to design the site for you. I don''t know what your hourly rate is, but I save a ridiculous amount of money by subcontracting the design work to someone else. It lets me do what I''m good at - write code - while wasting no hours visually designing the thing. Pat On 2/23/06, David Mitchell <monch1962@gmail.com> wrote:> Hello everyone, > > I just showed a friend a prototype of a site offering a service I''m > trying to sell (sorry, not on the Internet yet - he saw it at my > house). > > His comment: "Looks like it does everything, but also looks pretty > ugly. You''re not going to wow anybody with that". Sitting back and > thinking about it, he''s dead right - it needs some bling to make it > sell itself, rather than have me trying to convince people to use it. > Functionality-wise, it hits every button there is, but it looks like > crap. > > Not having a visual design bone in my body, I''m stumped to know how to > proceed. Sure, I''ve looked at the Ajax APIs for Rails and I can see > that using them could add the bling, but I just don''t have the bling > gene. > > Side note - I''m sitting here typing this in bare feet, old shorts with > >1 hole and >1 torn pocket and a T-shirt with torn collar & no logo in > a dull grey/green/olive sort of color. My watch is a Casio; my > toothbrush is cheap and electric; my car is dented; my OS is Gentoo; > my office is piled high with stuff that looks totally random except to > me; advertisers stop me in the street to ask me to pose as the "Before > using..." person for products they''re trying to sell. I am, however, > brave, honest and true. My core, my life experience, my very being, > is robustly anti-bling. > > Where does a guy like me turn to learn how to *use* these cool Ajax-y > things, without making something that looks ridiculous? I understand > the technology side of things; it''s the "make it look stylishly > enticing" part of things I''m struggling with. I have a graphic > designer friend I could call on, but she''s not across Web 2.0 stuff at > all and I don''t think we actually speak a common language when it > comes to design vs. functionality. > > Thanks in advance for any suggestions > > Regards > > Dave M. > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >
On 2/24/06, David Mitchell <monch1962@gmail.com> wrote:> > Hello everyone, > > I just showed a friend a prototype of a site offering a service I''m > trying to sell (sorry, not on the Internet yet - he saw it at my > house). > > His comment: "Looks like it does everything, but also looks pretty > ugly. You''re not going to wow anybody with that".Not having a visual design bone in my body, I''m stumped to know how to> proceed. Sure, I''ve looked at the Ajax APIs for Rails and I can see > that using them could add the bling, but I just don''t have the bling > gene.Hi David, I can totally relate :) I''ve always valued function over forum to a fault. Old school Web design stressed that where ''bling'' is concerned, less is more, for two reasons: 1) Visual overload and 2) slow dial-up connections resulting in slow page loads. AFAIC, #1 still very much applies, but technology has somewhat mitigated #2. As things changed over the years I found myself struggling to ''catch-up'' a bit and come into the modern world. Not knowing anything about your design background, I''ll toss www.webstyleguide.com out to you, just in case you might find it helpful. Where does a guy like me turn to learn how to *use* these cool Ajax-y> things, without making something that looks ridiculous? I understand > the technology side of things; it''s the "make it look stylishly > enticing" part of things I''m struggling with.Whoa, horsey! Before you go getting all jiggy for the AJAX, you haven''t mentioned a thing about you''re CSS, partials and layouts. I''d look long and hard at them before you move on to trying to trying to ajax up your site. When you do though, I''d suggest you make sure you''ve read the Curt Hibbs OnLamp tutorial on AJAX at www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/06/09/rails_ajax.html, The script.aculo.ussite, and Chad Fowlers new Rails Recipes book from Pragmatic Programmers. HTH, Dean -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://wrath.rubyonrails.org/pipermail/rails/attachments/20060224/a4b89dd4/attachment.html
David Mitchell wrote:> ... > Not having a visual design bone in my body, I''m stumped to know how to > proceed. Sure, I''ve looked at the Ajax APIs for Rails and I can see > that using them could add the bling, but I just don''t have the bling > gene. > ... > Where does a guy like me turn to learn how to *use* these cool Ajax-y > things, without making something that looks ridiculous? I understand > the technology side of things; it''s the "make it look stylishly > enticing" part of things I''m struggling with. I have a graphic > designer friend I could call on, but she''s not across Web 2.0 stuff at > all and I don''t think we actually speak a common language when it > comes to design vs. functionality.Don''t conflate usabilty and visual design. You may be better off contracting out your look, but you may have good skills when it comes to feel, which is the domain of AJAX and JavaScript. You can get some potential users to test your user-interface design even before much of the bling is added. -- We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore.
When i''m lazy i just borrow something from http://openwebdesign.org/ . I can implement a design pretty fast, so changing it later should not be a big problem. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
Thanks guys for your suggestions. I think the biggest problem is that what I''m presenting is 90% rows of data out of tables (duh), and it looks like ... rows of data out of tables, with a bunch of links thrown in for each row. I''ve got the alternating colors going for each row, but it really doesn''t look that great. I haven''t got embedded "font" stuff in HTML - it''s all CSS - but that doesn''t make me a Web designer by a long stretch! I''ve got my graphic artist friend looking at it at the moment, in exchange for pizza, beer and watching football later on - lots of giggles, which may or may not be a good sign... There *must* be a market for teaching color- and taste-blind people like me how to make minimally nice-looking sites. If you know anyone capable of doing this, tell them to get into business doing it sooner rather than later - they''ll clean up financially. Regards Dave M. On 24/02/06, Martin <wooyay@web.de> wrote:> When i''m lazy i just borrow something from http://openwebdesign.org/ . > I can implement a design pretty fast, so changing it later should not be > a big problem. > > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >
> > His comment: "Looks like it does everything, but also looks pretty > ugly. You''re not going to wow anybody with that". Sitting back and > thinking about it, he''s dead right - it needs some bling to make it > sell itself, rather than have me trying to convince people to use it. > Functionality-wise, it hits every button there is, but it looks like > crap.One word - ''Myspace'' Total **** Thousands of users Sold for $$$$$ If they want it they will come. _T -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
On Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 05:48:47PM +1100, David Mitchell wrote:> my OS is GentooOne of these things is not like the others. -- - Adam ** Expert Technical Project and Business Management **** System Performance Analysis and Architecture ****** [ http://www.everylastounce.com ] [ http://www.aquick.org/blog ] ............ Blog [ http://www.adamfields.com/resume.html ].. Experience [ http://www.flickr.com/photos/fields ] ... Photos [ http://www.aquicki.com/wiki ].............Wiki [ http://del.icio.us/fields ] ............. Links
Im going to throw my vote in for these two sites: www.owd.org www.oswd.org Download a design you like, pimp it out with some prototype stuff or moo.fx if you really feel it necessary. Brian Corrigan -----Original Message----- From: rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org [mailto:rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org] On Behalf Of Adam Fields Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 9:11 AM To: rails@lists.rubyonrails.org Subject: Re: [Rails] I need more bling! On Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 05:48:47PM +1100, David Mitchell wrote:> my OS is GentooOne of these things is not like the others. -- - Adam ** Expert Technical Project and Business Management **** System Performance Analysis and Architecture ****** [ http://www.everylastounce.com ] [ http://www.aquick.org/blog ] ............ Blog [ http://www.adamfields.com/resume.html ].. Experience [ http://www.flickr.com/photos/fields ] ... Photos [ http://www.aquicki.com/wiki ].............Wiki [ http://del.icio.us/fields ] ............. Links _______________________________________________ Rails mailing list Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
I really should check my links.. I meant: http://openwebdesign.org/ and http://www.oswd.org/ Just by using a little CSS magic you can turn any boring site into a beaut''. (Now tell me you didn''t design using tables...) Brian Corrigan -----Original Message----- From: rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org [mailto:rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org] On Behalf Of Brian Corrigan Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 3:44 PM To: rails@lists.rubyonrails.org Subject: RE: [Rails] I need more bling! Im going to throw my vote in for these two sites: www.owd.org www.oswd.org Download a design you like, pimp it out with some prototype stuff or moo.fx if you really feel it necessary. Brian Corrigan -----Original Message----- From: rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org [mailto:rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org] On Behalf Of Adam Fields Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 9:11 AM To: rails@lists.rubyonrails.org Subject: Re: [Rails] I need more bling! On Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 05:48:47PM +1100, David Mitchell wrote:> my OS is GentooOne of these things is not like the others. -- - Adam ** Expert Technical Project and Business Management **** System Performance Analysis and Architecture ****** [ http://www.everylastounce.com ] [ http://www.aquick.org/blog ] ............ Blog [ http://www.adamfields.com/resume.html ].. Experience [ http://www.flickr.com/photos/fields ] ... Photos [ http://www.aquicki.com/wiki ].............Wiki [ http://del.icio.us/fields ] ............. Links _______________________________________________ Rails mailing list Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails _______________________________________________ Rails mailing list Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
On Feb 23, 2006, at 10:48 PM, David Mitchell wrote:> I just showed a friend a prototype of a site offering a service I''m > trying to sell (sorry, not on the Internet yet - he saw it at my > house). > > His comment: "Looks like it does everything, but also looks pretty > ugly. You''re not going to wow anybody with that". Sitting back and > thinking about it, he''s dead right - it needs some bling to make it > sell itself, rather than have me trying to convince people to use it. > Functionality-wise, it hits every button there is, but it looks like > crap. > > Not having a visual design bone in my body, I''m stumped to know how to > proceed. Sure, I''ve looked at the Ajax APIs for Rails and I can see > that using them could add the bling, but I just don''t have the bling > gene.Yes, that''s *exactly* true. Hoping to gain the bling gene is like an artist hoping to become a programmer. Now, admittedly, some can do both. But, I think we can all agree that generally speaking you don''t want engineers creating bling, just as you don''t want artists creating code. -- -- Tom Mornini
Hey David.. One more thing to.. If you are having trouble with colors, go to your local paint store and grab a few of the paint swatch books. They tend to show you all the ways you can mix and match things. Brian Corrigan MCDBA, MCSE, MCSA Operations Manager, NY Video Lottery MGAM Systems, Inc. Office: (518) 881-1121 NOC: (518) 881-1122 Cell: (518) 727-6652 Pager: (518) 454-0760 Fax: (518) 881-1128 -----Original Message----- From: rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org [mailto:rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org] On Behalf Of David Mitchell Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 4:28 AM To: rails@lists.rubyonrails.org Subject: Re: [Rails] Re: I need more bling! Thanks guys for your suggestions. I think the biggest problem is that what I''m presenting is 90% rows of data out of tables (duh), and it looks like ... rows of data out of tables, with a bunch of links thrown in for each row. I''ve got the alternating colors going for each row, but it really doesn''t look that great. I haven''t got embedded "font" stuff in HTML - it''s all CSS - but that doesn''t make me a Web designer by a long stretch! I''ve got my graphic artist friend looking at it at the moment, in exchange for pizza, beer and watching football later on - lots of giggles, which may or may not be a good sign... There *must* be a market for teaching color- and taste-blind people like me how to make minimally nice-looking sites. If you know anyone capable of doing this, tell them to get into business doing it sooner rather than later - they''ll clean up financially. Regards Dave M. On 24/02/06, Martin <wooyay@web.de> wrote:> When i''m lazy i just borrow something from http://openwebdesign.org/ . > I can implement a design pretty fast, so changing it later should notbe> a big problem. > > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >_______________________________________________ Rails mailing list Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
> There *must* be a market for teaching color- and taste-blind > people like me how to make minimally nice-looking sites. If > you know anyone capable of doing this, tell them to get into > business doing it sooner rather than later - they''ll clean up > financially.Sure, but there are classes and tons of graphic design books sitting on shelves in your local book seller''s store. There are magazines and design retrospectives that show, page after page, of nothing but award-winning designs -- from print to advertising to interactive media. If one were to google "non-designer''s guide to design" there''s some good, free stuff out there, too. In short, just like leaning Ruby, the info is out there. But, if I could give one piece of advice to developers about design it would be this: * less is more If you find yourself frustrated with the visual design you''ve mocked-up, take a Zen approach to it and try to minimalize the design elements and colors; keep it clean; keep it simple; and remember that generous amounts of white space (areas in your layout that have no content in it) is a Good Thing.
Go get yourself The non-designers Design book, it''s more to do with design rather thank specific web design, but the principles are just as relevant. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321193857/> > There *must* be a market for teaching color- and taste-blind > > people like me how to make minimally nice-looking sites. If > > you know anyone capable of doing this, tell them to get into > > business doing it sooner rather than later - they''ll clean up > > financially.-- Cheers, Serdar Kilic http://weblog.kilic.net/
I''ve got Zeldman''s book "Designing with Web Standards", where he talks all about not using tables except for tabular data. I did that up front. It''s a good book, but he''s very much talking to Web-designers-cum-graphic-artists rather than plonkers like me. Problem is that most of my content *is* tabular data; on almost all pages, I''ve got a banner across the top, menu down the left side, a description of what the content is, plus a whole lot of what''s obviously data out of tables in the middle. Where there''s actions the user can do on a row of data (which is the norm), I''ve added clickable links at the right hand end of the row. I''ve used <div> instead of <table> for everything but the tabular data, just like Zeldman recommends. The layout itself I''m pretty happy with; it just doesn''t excite. I had a look at www.csszengarden.com, and flicked through the book of the site the other day. Their stuff looks fantastic, but my problem is their content is paragraphs and headings, not tables of data. I''ve decided that it''s much easier to show paragraphs and headings (look at all the nice blog sites out there) than rows and columns, but that doesn''t mean that rows and columns needs to look like crap! Oh well - my graphic artist friend is off now mocking up some pages for me in Dreamweaver. She thinks it doesn''t look that bad as it currently stands; I''m not sure if that''s a good or bad thing. Regards Dave M. On 25/02/06, Brian Corrigan <brian.corrigan@mm-games.com> wrote:> I really should check my links.. I meant: > http://openwebdesign.org/ > and > http://www.oswd.org/ > > Just by using a little CSS magic you can turn any boring site into a > beaut''. (Now tell me you didn''t design using tables...) > > > Brian Corrigan > > -----Original Message----- > From: rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org > [mailto:rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org] On Behalf Of Brian Corrigan > Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 3:44 PM > To: rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > Subject: RE: [Rails] I need more bling! > > Im going to throw my vote in for these two sites: > > www.owd.org > www.oswd.org > > Download a design you like, pimp it out with some prototype stuff or > moo.fx if you really feel it necessary. > > > Brian Corrigan > > -----Original Message----- > From: rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org > [mailto:rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org] On Behalf Of Adam Fields > Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 9:11 AM > To: rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > Subject: Re: [Rails] I need more bling! > > On Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 05:48:47PM +1100, David Mitchell wrote: > > my OS is Gentoo > > One of these things is not like the others. > > -- > - Adam > > ** Expert Technical Project and Business Management > **** System Performance Analysis and Architecture > ****** [ http://www.everylastounce.com ] > > [ http://www.aquick.org/blog ] ............ Blog > [ http://www.adamfields.com/resume.html ].. Experience > [ http://www.flickr.com/photos/fields ] ... Photos > [ http://www.aquicki.com/wiki ].............Wiki > [ http://del.icio.us/fields ] ............. Links > > > > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >
With a bit of shading and borders (top and bottom border slightly lighter/darker creates a feeling of depth), you can create pretty rows, for example http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum, all tabular data. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> I''ve decided that it''s much easier to > show paragraphs and headings (look at all the nice blog sites > out there) than rows and columns, but that doesn''t mean that > rows and columns needs to look like crap!True that. But, one good resource for CSS-tricks is the CSS-List Wiki: List of links to style "Nicer Tables": css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=NicerTables> Oh well - my graphic artist friend is off now mocking up some > pages for me in Dreamweaver. She thinks it doesn''t look that > bad as it currently stands; I''m not sure if that''s a good or > bad thing.Sounds like a good thing!
I want to eat this homepage: http://haveamint.com/ No tables ! Of course, check out the "demo" page of the actual product, and it does indeed use tables. DD''s are good to use for tablesque stuff. The W3C has some pretty good descriptions of exactly *what* should be used for what in the layout realm. I know this stuff as I''ve read about it... Personally, I couldn''t design my way out of a wet paper bag with the scissor tool. On 2/24/06, Dean Matsueda <dmatsueda@bsr.org> wrote:> > > > I''ve decided that it''s much easier to > > show paragraphs and headings (look at all the nice blog sites > > out there) than rows and columns, but that doesn''t mean that > > rows and columns needs to look like crap! > > True that. But, one good resource for CSS-tricks is the CSS-List Wiki: > > List of links to style "Nicer Tables": > css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=NicerTables > > > Oh well - my graphic artist friend is off now mocking up some > > pages for me in Dreamweaver. She thinks it doesn''t look that > > bad as it currently stands; I''m not sure if that''s a good or > > bad thing. > > Sounds like a good thing! > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://wrath.rubyonrails.org/pipermail/rails/attachments/20060225/1800ec11/attachment-0001.html
2006/2/25, Dylan Stamat <dylans@gmail.com>:> > I want to eat this homepage: http://haveamint.com/ >I also _love_ their design. I bought mint just to look at the beautiful tabular data :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://wrath.rubyonrails.org/pipermail/rails/attachments/20060225/3589ca6c/attachment.html